The public and sports media has turned up the heat on the Cleveland Indians to replace their racist relic of a logo—the grinning, red-skinned Chief Wahoo. Slight progress was made recently when Cleveland replaced the logo on their hats, but left it on the uniform sleeve.
Recently, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has taken a more proactive role in the phasing out of the logo, but Indians owner, Paul Dolan, while acknowledging the need to replace the logo, remains inexplicably evasive when it comes to laying out a specific plan and timeline.
Recently, Dolan addressed the issue at a Cleveland area Jewish temple, of all places, and hemmed and hawed his way the following explanation, recapped via the Cleveland Jewish News:
“Some want to keep [Wahoo], some want to get rid of him, but the issue is not going to go. We are mindful that there are people who are offended by it, and, frankly, if you leave Northeastern Ohio, it changes, the prospective (sic) on this changes. We were on some path towards a middle ground, I don’t know what that path was, and that’s still where we’re headed, but we’re headed there faster than we’ve ever liked because the commissioner of baseball weighed in on this.”
Dolan said Manfred had reached out to the franchise about its logo, particularly after a Canadian lawsuit was filed against the team and MLB for using the logo during the playoffs against the Toronto Blue Jays in October. Dolan said he favors a reduced use of Wahoo without eliminating the logo, but he suspects the logo will be resolved one way or the other within a couple of years.
Dolan’s messy statement suggests that the logo only offends people outside of Cleveland, hints that the commissioner is pushing him to move faster than he’d like, claims that removing the patch will take “a couple of years,” and indicates that his preferred resolution would be to use the logo indefinitely.
It’s clear that in the the fight over the Cleveland Indians logo, Dolan is preparing himself to do the right thing only because he is forced to, not because he believes it is right.
